Passion, obsession and a very pink David Beckham – the glories to behold at the Chelsea Flower Show

The Chelsea Flower Show has been taking place in London this week. It concludes today. I like gardens and plants, and can be persuaded to have a glass of rosé at lunchtime, so when a friend organised for a team of us to attend this famous gardening extravaganza to mark his milestone birthday, I was delighted to join. And I loved it. Well, with one wrinkle.

Now, for any of you who don’t know your daisies from your derrieres, or have somehow avoided this very British event, a small explanation. The Chelsea Flower Show, organised by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), opens with a party attended by the royals – the king and queen both rocked up – and a lot of TV celebrities who are definitely in the daisies-from-derrieres camp.

The first two days are exclusively for RHS members and their guests (that was me), then anyone can go. And they do: thousands come from the shires for a day out to see new plant varieties, perhaps order a pergola for their country house or snap up a giant 18th-century stone trough about the size of a London apartment. People dress up. You can wear a hat.

Much of the press coverage is lavished on the show-garden competition, where leading designers, in partnership with a flush sponsor, create innovative creations that perhaps reflect on climate change or mental health. But this is the wrinkle – you can barely see them.

Each tiny patch is roped off with crowds of nice elderly people – often in granny-scrums four or five deep – craning to get a view. It’s the gardening equivalent of a mosh pit – a mulch pit? Sponsors, of course, have access to their miniature garden but risk ending up looking like exhibits in a zoo. “Look, is that a lesser-spotted chairman behind that pine tree?”

But the real reason they seem to be fenced off is to give all-day access to the BBC camera crews (there’s a show from the event every day). And it’s then that you realise that these are not gardens, they’re TV sets. Each one needs a place for the crew to stand, easy sightlines for the cameras. A gardening presenter, waiting to be given their cue, stares at a bloom as though it were a love interest.

Meanwhile, I watched the carer of a young man in a wheelchair just give up trying to get a view of the vegetation. A woman wiped tears from her face as she tried to take in the Parkinson’s UK garden – she had just lost her husband to the illness. It’s a shame that these people can’t be more front and centre. But you can escape this part and then the real fun begins.

At the heart of the show is the Great Pavilion, a vast marquee filled with exhibitors showcasing their particular obsessions – bonsais, hostas, roses, water lilies. It’s part village fête, part Victorian showground. It’s colourful, even a little brash in places, and truly glorious.

Meeting people who have dedicated their lives to perfecting one thing, to becoming the go-to person for a particular plant, is wonderful. I soon find myself eyeing up a display of water irises even though I have no pond and they would have to take over the bathtub. Perhaps I need that trough.

You could spend all day here because passion is a very compelling thing to be around. You can even get a glimpse of the new Sir David Beckham rose – a flushed, pink-faced little number. The rose that is, though I was a little taken aback by its flawless petals. Surely modern horticulture could manage a few blue tattoos by now.

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